Gary Vikan

Dumbarton Oaks

These sculptures reflect the Blisses' wide-ranging tastes and extraordinary connoisseurship. About a quarter are Greco-Roman; nearly two-thirds of the rest are Late Antique, mostly limestone carvings from Early Byzantine Egypt. Sculpture from the Middle Byzantine period is very rare, making the four pieces in this collection especially significant.

Catalogue of the Sculpture in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection from the Ptolemaic Period to the Renaissance

Karl A. Taube

Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks presents the Olmec portion of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art. It illustrates all thirty-nine Olmec art objects in color plates and includes many complementary and comparative black-and-white illustrations and drawings. The body of Pre-Columbian art that Robert Bliss carefully assembled over a half-century between 1912 and 1963, amplified only slightly since his death, is a remarkably significant collection. In addition to their aesthetic quality and artistic significance, the objects hold much information regarding the social worlds and religious and symbolic views of the people who made and used them before the arrival of Europeans in the New World. This volume is the second in a series of catalogues that will treat objects in the Bliss Pre-Columbian Collection. The majority of the Olmec objects in the collection are made of jade, the most precious material for the peoples of ancient Mesoamerica from early times through the sixteenth century. Various items such as masks, statuettes, jewelry, and replicas of weapons and tools were used for ceremonial purposes and served as offerings. Karl Taube brings his expertise on the lifeways and beliefs of ancient Mesoamerican peoples to his study of the Olmec objects in teh Bliss collection. His understanding of jade covers a broad range of knowledge from chemical compositions to geological sources to craft technology to the symbolic power of the green stone. Throughout the book the author emphasizes the role of jade as a powerful symbol of water, fertility, and particularly, of the maize plant which was the fundamental source of life and sustenance for the Olmec. The shiny green of the stone was analogous to the green growth of maize. This fundamental concept was elaborated in specific religious beliefs, many of which were continued and elaborated by later Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Maya. Karl Taube employs his substantial knowledge of Pre-Columbian cultures to explore and explicate Olmec symbolism in this catalogue.

Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks

Dictionary Catalogue of the Byzantine Collection of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Washington, D.C.

Eric McGeer

The vast collection of 17,000 Byzantine lead seals in the Harvard collections has long been recognized as an important source for the study of the Byzantine provinces. This volume is the fourth in the series of catalogues of geographical seals, and presents photographs, descriptions, and commentaries on the seals from the East.

Catalogue of Byzantine Seals at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Fogg Museum of Art: The East

This publication brings to a wider audience important new findings in the fields of medieval pottery and archaeometry. The new data that materials analysis provides about Byzantine ceramics and their production at times supports, modifies, and even contradicts conclusions derived from traditional archaeological methods.

Materials Analysis of Byzantine Pottery

Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Alexius I to Michael VIII, 1081-1261. pt. 1. Alexius I to Alexius V (1081-1204). pt. 2. The emperors of Nicaea and their contemporaries (1204-1261)

Gisela Marie Augusta Richter

This catalogue focuses on the Greek and Roman antiquities of the collections at Dumbarton Oaks. The catalogue also includes other objects, such as a bronze horse, and four floor mosaics from Antioch.

Catalogue of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection

Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Michael VIII to Constantine XI 1258-1453

A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 9 and 10 October 1993

Social Patterns in Pre-classic Mesoamerica

Michel Conan

Former Director of Garden and Landscape Studies Michel Conan

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Washington, Estados Unidos)

This book unites new information and surprising results from the last fifteen years of garden research, at a remove from the clichs of Orientalism. Garden archaeology reveals the economic importance of Judean gardens in Roman times and the visual complexity of gardens created and transformed in Moorish Spain. More contemporary approaches unravel the cultural continuities, variations, and differences between gardens in the Middle East since Roman times and in the Islamic world. Scholars present new sources for studies of gardens in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, the Ottoman world, Judea, Morocco, and Moorish Spain. They explore the interplay of conflicting influences, the cultural reception of gardens in religious and mystical societies, and the political uses of gardens, presenting an unexpected diversity of garden forms in all levels of society.

Unity and Diversity : Questions, Methods and Resources in a Multicultural Perspective

Middle East Garden Traditions

Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture

Developments in garden art cannot be isolated from the social changes upon which they either depend or have some bearing. Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550 - 1850 offers an unparalleled opportunity to discover how complex relationships between bourgeois and aristocrats have led to developments in garden art from the Renaissance into the Industrial Revolution, irrespective of stylistic differences. These essays show how garden creation has contributed to the blurring of social boundaries and to the ongoing redefinition of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. Also illustrated is the aggressive use of gardens by bourgeois in more-or-less successful attempts at subverting existing social hierarchies in renaissance Genoa and eighteenth-century Bristol, England; as well as the opposite, as demonstrated by the king of France, Louis XIV, who claimed to rule the arts, but imitated the curieux fleuristes, a group of amateurs from diverse strata of French society. Essays in this volume explore this complex framework of relationships in diverse settings in Britain, France, Biedermeier Vienna, and renaissance Genoa. The volume confirms that gardens were objects of conspicuous consumption, but also challenges the theories of consumption set forth by Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu, and explores the contributions of gardens to major cultural changes like the rise of public opinion, gender and family relationships, and capitalism. Garden history, then, informs many of the debates of contemporary cultural history, ranging from rural management practices in early seventeenth-century France to the development of a sense of British pride at the expansive Vauxhall Gardens favored equally by the legendary Frederick, Prince of Wales, and by the teeming London masses. This volume amply demonstrates the varied and extensive contributions of garden creation to cultural exchange between 1550 and 1850. -- Publisher's description.

Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550-1850

James Scott Raymond

Richard L. Burger

This volume is devoted to the archaeology of Formative Ecuador in order to bring new information on this important period of the region's past to the attention of New World scholars.

A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 7 and 8 October 1995

Archaeology of Formative Ecuador

The first volume in the catalogue covers the coins of Anastasius I through Maurice, and includes a history of the collections.

Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Anastasius I to Maurice, 491-602

Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: pt. 1. Leo III to Michael III (717-867). pt. 2. Basil I to Nicephorus III (867-1081). By P. Grierson

Dumbarton Oaks

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